Interactive multimedia presentations and coursework have become an important and effective method of presenting information and teaching. Additionally, the ability to program computers has also become an important skill which can take years to develop and master. Therefore, conventional computer systems have been developed which address each of these items. However, no known conventional computer system addresses both of these items.
A. Creation of Interactive Multimedia Presentations
When people communicate with each other, they use many different methods to creatively convey information. Among these methods of communication are: sound/music, pictures, words, numbers, animated sequences, and full motion video. The use of these methods in a presentation is typically referred to as the multimedia approach to communication.
Historically, multimedia presentations have been encumbered by the use of multiple technologies, such as slide projectors, videotapes, and computer graphics. But today, powerful computers offer a single delivery system or platform for integrated multimedia presentations. Thus, the speaker or teacher only needs to handle a single piece of equipment. The difficulty then remains in how the speaker or instructor is going to create and present multimedia presentations using these powerful computers.
In addition to creating an environment for multimedia presentations, the computer has also made it possible to create interactive presentations which means that the viewer can actually participate in a presentation by communicating with the computer. This has given rise to a class of computer software applications called courseware which is a powerful teaching and training tool. Again, the difficulty remains as to how the instructor is to create and present these interactive multimedia presentations.
One conventional computer system provides a method for specifying and executing independent, multimedia tasks along a synchronized time-line in the form of a matrix with the event elements making up the rows and the time periods making up the columns. Although this conventional system addresses the issue concerning the time consuming task of creating the presentation, this system fails to provide important interactive capabilities. Furthermore, this conventional system employs a time-line for the control of events in a presentation. Using a time-line requires the operator using such a conventional system to duplicate events so that the events can be executed in more than a single time period. This requires additional computer resources which is not desirable.
B. Visual Programming Systems and the Method of Visually Programming an Interactive Multimedia Presentation
In general, programming may be defined as specifying a method for doing something the computer can do in terms the computer can interpret or understand. There are many aspects of programming: the languages and environment used for the specifications; the specifications themselves; the determination of whether the computer has executed a specification as expected; the display of data involved in the execution of the specification; etc.
In the past, traditional programming systems in well-known or standard programming languages, e.g., FORTRAN or PL/1 have been used to program computers. However, the problem with traditional programming systems is that they require programmers to learn the cryptic statements and rigid structure or syntax used by standard programming languages. It is for this reason that icons have been used to replace the cryptic statements of standard programming languages with visual programming languages to develop visual programming systems.
Visual programming can be applied to all aspects of programming. The important issue is creating meaningful graphic objects involved in an aspect of programming. This is addressed in the creation of visual programming systems.
One example of a visual programming system is Pict which is designed to aid program implementation using computer graphics. With Pict, users sit in front of a color graphics display and communicate with the system throughout all phases of their work by pointing to icons in a menu tree. Pict permits the user to select images that visually represent the data structures and variables needed; to draw the desired algorithm as a logically structured, multi-dimensional picture; to watch the program run; to see the results being generated; and if the program isn't doing what is expected, to see where and when the error occurs. Although Pict is a visual programming system having control structures for writing computer applications, Pict requires arrows or series of arrows to show the flow of an application. Using arrows to show the flow of an application is somewhat archaic, requires additional computer resources, and is not necessary to depict a program flow.
Although visual programming systems have been developed, these systems fail to appreciate the need to create a visual flowchart that symbolizes the logical flow of the application (or presentation) being developed. These visual programming systems also fail to concentrate on the flowchart metaphor to remove the tedium from program creation. These conventional visual programming systems fail to permit the programmer to assemble pictures, brushes, sounds, speech, animations, music, video, text, and datafiles and control them interactively via a mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, or joystick. Therefore, a single visual programming system which addresses all of these shortcomings of conventional visual programming system is desirous.